Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/383

Rh ernor-Generalship is well summarized in the final paragraph of the long despatch of July, 1804, in which he reported to the Court of Directors, in the lofty language of a triumphant proconsul, the general result of the wars and treaties that he had made for the consolidation of our Eastern empire and the pacification of all India – "A general bond of connection is now established between the British government and the principal states of India, on principles which render it the interest of every state to maintain its alliance with the British Government, which preclude the inordinate aggrandizement of any one of those states by usurpation of the rights and possessions of others, and which secure to every state the unmolested exercise of its separate authority within the limits of its established dominion, under the general protection of the British power."

It is indeed from this period, and from the great augmentations of territory obtained by Lord Wellesley's high-handed and clear-headed policy, that we may date the substantial formation of the three Indian Presidencies. Up to 1792 the Madras Presidency administered in full jurisdiction no more than a few districts on the coast. But between 1799 and 1804 the partition of Mysore, the lapse of Tanjore, the cessions from Haidarabad, and the transfer of the whole Karnatic to the Company, brought large and fertile tracts within the administrative circle of Madras and constituted it the headquarters of a large government in South India, which has received no very important subsequent accre-